More Nebulae from Cape Schanck
We’re out of our latest CV19 lockdown (supposedly a “1-week, snap lockdown” that turned into 12 weeks. This has gifted Melbourne with the title of “Longest total CV19 lockdown in the world”. Not something to be proud of, and a sign of our government’s inability to maintain a functioning Public Health Service.)
What better way to celebrate a clear night than a trip to the coast to take some astro images?
Sadly, what I was hoping to be a quiet and peaceful night of imaging turned into crowds of people. Plenty of other photographers hunting for Aurora Australis, and far too many idiots shining bright lights everywhere. Thankfully we got there early and snagged an excellent spot with fantastic views to the south, with the lighthouse behind us.
Looking to the west, Venus made an early appearance, along with Scorpius, although they were both below the horizon by about midnight. Jupiter and Saturn were pretty much overhead, although they were not good imaging targets because of the lighthouse beam. (Also, I don’t have a long enough lens to take any useful images of planets. DSOs are as good as I can manage.)
My plan had been to use my 14mm lens and capture a massive panorama of the Milky Way rising from the west and curving overhead to the east, and I had a perfect view to achieve exactly that. What happened? Stupidity on my part - I didn’t tape the focus ring on the lens, so everything went out of focus when I added the dew heater. Sadly, I didn’t realise for quite some time - all the panorama shots were wasted, as was a good series of the Large Magellanic Cloud. There were some very rude words said!
I changed to the 90mm (135mm effective) lens and taped it’s focus ring so it would not shift when the dew heater went on. My targets then became the LMC, The Pleiades and the Orion Nebula.
Surprisingly, the light pollution filter seems to have worked here - although I did have a very ugly blue tinge to the final stacked image. I will have to try again without the filter and see what the results look like. If the filter is causing a massive colour shift, then it may have been a waste of money. +sad face+
The LMC came out quite well, and so did the Orion Nebula. Yay! The Pleiades didn’t come out well.- there was too much light pollution, and even with the light pollution filter I could not get any images that I’m happy to present here.
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC)
The LMC was at a high angle, so a lot less atmosphere to look through. This is the first time I’ve tried capturing the LMC and I think it’s come out pretty well. I can see myself working harder to capture this one again.
Orion didn’t rise high enough until about midnight. In hindsight, I should have waited a bit longer, and maybe gone for a longer lens to pick out the nebula. Maybe next time.
If you look at the bottom of the image, you can see another (very famous) nebula, although you may have to squint a bit to see it… Now I have 2 targets in Orion to capture when I get a longer lens!
The Orion Nebula
